NLCS: Phillies Beat Padres to Move One Win From World Series
The World Series might be over, but the Philadelphia Phillies still have a chance to clinch the division and a 2-1 lead in the National League Division Series: They beat up on the host San Diego Padres 10-0 in a game that didn’t seem like it could go on forever. The Phillies have lost back-to-back games to the Rockies and Royals and are now tied with Houston and Colorado in second place in the Majors just one game back.
The Padres had won seven of their past eight games, including a five-game winning streak, before they lost Sunday. A day after the Padres won a three-game series against New York and are now just a half-game behind the Phillies for second place in the National League, they’re 1-7 and are looking to snap a 10-game losing streak.
“We’re playing good baseball, but we have a lot of work to do,” said Padres manager Bud Black. “We’re not going to give up.”
The Phillies had won seven of their past nine games, including a four-game series against the Rockies. They’ve got a chance to clinch the NL East, and on Monday night they’ll play the Mets.
The Phillies took a 2-0 lead in the first on Aaron Nola’s sacrifice fly. After that, they scored four more times in the second and third. And after they lost a run in the top of the fifth, they took the lead for good on Tyler Cloyd’s double.
Cloyd hit a go-ahead RBI double in the fourth inning, but Chris Sale struck out Brandon Crawford and Scott Kingery to end the inning. Sale gave up a three-run, ninth-inning homer to Brandon Crawford in the eighth, and Philadelphia lost a 2-1 game.
“It was a rough night. It was a tough loss. We’ve just got to keep working,” said Sale, who allowed four homers before the game was over. “We’ve got to execute better than we did tonight and we haven’t.
